Unacknowledged and missed cases of sexual victimization: A comparison of responses to broad versus behaviorally specific questions.

From the beginning of systematic research on sexual victimization, it has been recognized that a substantial proportion of women report nonconsensual sexual experiences meeting the defining criteria of rape in response to behaviorally specific items, but do not acknowledge their experience as rape in response to broad questions about whether they have ever been raped. Recent studies suggest that rates of unacknowledged rape may be as high or even higher among men than among women. This study examined rates of unacknowledged female and male victims of rape and sexual assault by comparing responses to behaviorally specific items of the Sexual Aggression and Victimization Scale (SAV-S) with responses to broad questions using the labels of sexual assault and rape (SARA) in 593 participants (303 women) in Germany. As predicted, more women and men were classified as rape victims based on behaviorally specific items than on the basis of the broad rape item. The rates of unacknowledged rape were about 60% for women and 75% for men. The gender difference was not significant. Against our prediction, no significant differences in acknowledgement of sexual assault were found in relation to coercive strategy and victim-perpetrator relationship. Few cases of rape and sexual assault identified by the SARA items were missed by the behaviorally specific questions. The implications for establishing prevalence rates of rape and sexual assault and for comparing victims and nonvictims in terms of vulnerability factors and outcomes of sexual victimization are discussed.

Order Effects of Presenting Coercive Tactics on Young Adults' Reports of Sexual Victimization.

Measures designed to collect prevalence reports of sexual victimization need to be robust against variations of question context to yield valid findings. Previous research has examined variations in the order in which questions about unwanted sexual acts and questions about coercive tactics are presented. The current study examined potential effects of the order in which coercive tactics are presented on self-reported prevalence rates of sexual victimization. The following two versions of the Sexual Aggression and Victimization Scale (SAV-S), a validated measure for studying sexual aggression victimization and perpetration in college students, were used: (a) the standard version in which the physical-force items were presented first and the items referring to the use of verbal pressure were presented last, and (b) a reversed order in which the verbal-pressure items were presented first and the physical-force items were presented last. Items referring to the exploitation of the victim's inability to resist were placed in the middle in both versions. In a sample of 856 participants from Germany (475 female, 381 male, mean age of 24 years), most of whom were university students, 80.4% of women and 55.3% of men reported at least one experience of sexual victimization since the age of 14. No order effects on overall victimization rates were found. For both genders, the victimization rate through verbal pressure was higher when this tactic was presented first. Victimization rates through the threat or use of force were higher in the force-first than in the force-last condition for women, but could not be tested for men due to small cell sizes. No order effects were found for both men and women on reports of victimization through exploiting the inability to resist. The implications of the results for the reliable measurement of sexual aggression are discussed.

Does Question Format Matter in Assessing the Prevalence of Sexual Aggression? A Methodological Study.

As research on sexual aggression has been growing, methodological issues in assessing prevalence rates have received increased attention. Building on work by Abbey and colleagues about effects of question format, participants in this study (1,253; 621 female; 632 male) were randomly assigned to one of two versions of the Sexual Aggression and Victimization Scale (SAV-S). In Version 1, the coercive tactic (use/threat of physical force, exploitation of the inability to resist, verbal pressure) was presented first, and sexual acts (sexual touch, attempted and completed sexual intercourse, other sexual acts) were presented as subsequent questions. In Version 2, sexual acts were presented first, and coercive tactics as subsequent questions. No version effects emerged for overall perpetration rates reported by men and women. The overall victimization rate across all items was significantly higher in the tactic-first than in the sexual-act-first conditions for women, but not for men. Classifying participants by their most severe experience of sexual victimization showed that fewer women were in the nonvictim category and more men were in the nonconsensual sexual contact category when the coercive tactic was presented first. Sexual experience background did not moderate the findings. The implications for the measurement of self-reported sexual aggression victimization and perpetration are discussed.